This is the image dictatorships sell to their poor, uneducated, and ill-informed public.
The reality is much worse. Rulers tend to make decisions that benefit those who they share power with (no man rules alone). Dictatorships thrive where there are abundant natural resources combined with an uneducated public. Democracies tend to thrive where a country's main resource is it's people.
North Korea has neither. But those in power wish to remain so, and the cult of personality around "the ruler" and his benevolence helps maintain some form of control over those that are starving. Well that and a lot of guns. North Korea has a well deserved reputation for brutality and suffering.
Checkout the video series Rules for Rulers. It's pretty eye opening, and helped me change the way I look at countries and geopolitics. [1]
He's demonstrated his willingness to execute people (including his half-brother) to maintain his grip on power. So this isn't a guy who is worried about ethics and morals. He understands the politics of power, and is clearly capable of doing what it takes to hold on to power. These are men not to be trifled with. It's probably kill or be killed at this point. He's smart enough to have recognized that early on, which is why he's still around and his brother isn't.
Sometimes power and prestige, getting your way, winning and being right all the time are the ends in and of themselves. Having worked with many C-level people, I can say that their one common motivation seems to be "winning at any cost". If people are helped along the way, great. If people are hurt, well... tough decisions had to be made.
It definitely takes charisma, and the ability to convince people that you have their best interests in mind. Steve Jobs' reality distortion field comes to mind. The essence of a politician is they always seem to agree with you and be on your side, but you never know what they're really thinking, and don't be surprised if they blindside you at some point.
Evolutionary biologists suggest that there's a reason our species tolerates sociopaths (it's seemingly in our gene pool) -- they have the ability to get things done and build empires, skills that are needed to survive at the very top of power structures.
It's a manufactured impression.
Western oligarchy controlled media doesnt like to talk about how they pay $0 for college and medical care. They focus exclusively on the prison camps, etc.
Contrariwise Im pretty sure that North Koreans are surprisingly well educated about what went down in Guantanamo bay, Abu ghraib, medical bankruptcies in America and the cost of college.
They're not. This is another consistently manufactured impression - that the famine never ended.
They were starving in the 90s but it wasn't like that was deliberate and it ended 25 years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korean_famine
There's a number of ways the media continues to manufacture this impression, including:
* Interviews with people who fled North Korea a long time ago - closer to the famine.
* Paying North Koreans they can gain access to for good stories - at which point they get some really juicy stories. A small number of these apart under the weight of their own contradictions - the rest, of course, can't ever be verified.
* Looking at satellite photos and drawing dubious conclusions (like if there isn't food being imported from China this month that they don't have food).
* Looking at trailing indicators of the famine like stunted height.
* Comparing everything to South Korea - which has really good metrics even by first world standards - rather than, say, an average middle income or 3rd world country.
Killing dissidents? Sure, they're getting in the way of your utopian plan. Failed economic plans that lead to famine? Well, the idea had some justification, better pivot to avoid further harm. Hell, even overtly fascist ideologies have some subset of the "common folk" that they attempt to promote.
North Korea's leadership doesn't seem to have any interest at all in the wellbeing of the populace. I'd expect radical, top down changes to be common place until they found some solution that didn't have almost half of the country malnourished. Yet they just seem to double down, consistently.